Heads or Tails?

I spent the better part of last evening with a friend of mine (although we have never met, we have become more intimate than most friends ever get due to our shared status as cancer survivors). She was faced with the challenge of deciding what treatment to try next. The situation is almost impossible to understand unless you’ve been there. Imagine…..you have a terrible disease (okay, not so hard to understand so far). But should you do traditional treatment, which you know has unpleasant side effects? Or perhaps a more alternative treatment that has less unpleasant-ness, but not as much information on what really happens to you down the line? Should you let your body take a break from all those chemicals (because we all know that chemotherapy will eventually cause another cancer). Or should you keep chugging along as long as you can in an effort to keep the cancer at bay? Back and forth, back and forth. The bad part is that no one….NO ONE…..has the right answer. And even worse….you have to second guess yourself.

In the end, she decided to go for alternative treatment. What courage it takes to go forward, one step at a time, into the darkness of the unknown. To everyone that has to make those choices, my sympathy and my admiration go with you. Onward…….